Fever Dreams
by Lipton Lee
Summary: Two Hundred years without human sickness, and now this...


Category: Angel the Series and B/A fluff  
  
Rating: PG. Very mild cursing.  
  
Summary: Human Angel is very, very sick.   
  
Spoilers: Future fic. So, we'll say everything from ATS seasons 1 and 2. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.   
  
This fic was originally written for a challenge at Sunlight and Shadow… the Not Entirely Perfect challenge. It was fun to write, and I always wanted to write a sick!Angel fic : )  
  
Disclaimer: Owned by the all-mighty Joss, Fox and Mutant Enemy. Not mine. No money being made. "I did not do it. It was not me. I was not there at that time."   
  
Fever Dreams  
Lee   
  
Tuesday.  
  
Two in the morning, Pacific Time.   
  
Los Angeles, California.  
  
An old hotel in Hollywood.   
  
Angel stumbled out of the bathroom, and back into bed. It had only been two days since the forces of good had won the End of Days. Two days since his transformation from vampire with a soul, to full-fledged, honest-to-god, human being. Well, except for the super strength. That stayed for obvious reasons.  
  
Two days since his ex-girlfriend and her friends had left.   
  
And in those two days, he'd managed to develop a nasty case of the flu.   
  
"Two-hundred years," he muttered as he flung the covers over his head. "Two-hundred years without human sickness, and now this."  
  
And then things got worse.  
  
The phone rang.  
  
Angel moaned, and picked up the phone. "House o' pies."   
  
To say the least, he was feeling strange.  
  
"Angel?"  
  
"Yes, Cordelia?"  
  
"Did you just say…? Never mind, I don't think I wanna know. You sound awful."  
  
Angel sighed. "I think I'm sick."  
  
"That sucks," Cordelia replied. "I just had a vision, so I sorta feel your pain."  
  
"What did you see?"  
  
"Big, ugly purple thing at the corner of Fifth," Cordelia replied.  
  
"Okay," Angel nodded. He sat up and flung the covers over.  
  
"Are you sure you're okay to fight?" Cordelia asked. "I could always call Wesley and Gunn…"  
  
"No. I got it. I'll call you later. You okay?"  
  
"Yeah. Just be careful," Cordelia said. "Oh! And don't puke on it! That'll make it mad!"  
  
"Right." He hung up the phone, got dressed and left in his car for Fifth.  
  
  
An Hour Later…  
  
Angel came home feeling ten times worse than before he'd left. He was now covered in turquoise slime, and ready to drop dead.   
  
He trudged up to his room, peeled off his cloths and stepped into the shower. Twenty minutes later, he came out, threw up, put on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and threw up again, and then curled into a fetal position under the covers of his bed.   
  
He had almost fallen asleep when the phone rang again.  
  
"Damn," he muttered. He picked it up. "Hello?"  
  
"Angel?"  
  
"Buffy?"   
  
"Yeah," she replied. "Hi. I really need to talk to you."  
  
*Click. *  
  
Angel hung up the phone.  
  
  
He must have fallen asleep, because when Angel opened his eyes again, the sun was shinning through his window.  
  
He looked around the room. It seemed hazy and somewhat different. Mostly because it looked like the room he'd had in his parents' house two hundred years before.  
  
That, and the middle-aged woman sitting in the chair next to his bed.  
  
She wore an old-fashioned-looking dress, and had dark brown hair up in a bun. Her brown eyes were concentrating on the piece of stitching she was working on.   
  
Her name: Colleen McConners.   
  
His mother.  
  
"Okay," Angel said in a raspy voice. "This is a dream."   
  
Colleen looked up and rolled her eyes. "An' ye're sick."   
  
Angel sighed and sat up. "You're still a dream."   
  
"If ye say so," Colleen replied.   
  
"I do."  
  
"That's nice," she said. She shoved him back to lie down. "Ye're sick. Sleep."   
  
He blinked. "Okay…"   
  
  
He figured he'd fallen asleep again, because when he woke up, or, thought he woke up, the next time, it was dark.   
  
"I think I'm still dreaming," Angel muttered.   
  
Sitting on the bed were Jenny Calendar, and Alan Francis Doyle, passing back and forth a pint of cookie-dough-fudge-mint-chip ice cream.  
  
"Maybe you are," Jenny said. "Maybe you're not."  
  
"Want?" Doyle asked, offering Angel the ice cream.   
  
Angel shook his head. "No thanks."   
  
"Why'd you hang up on Buffy?" Jenny asked.  
  
"I can't deal with her right now," Angel replied, sitting up. "I just wanna be left alone."   
  
"I don't know," Jenny shrugged. "When a girl cares for you as much as she does, she might've offered to come take care of you, because while sleep is good, it won't cure the flu."   
  
"I'm sick? I can get sick?" Angel asked.  
  
Doyle smirked. "S'all part o' bein human, Bud. You'll learn."   
  
Carefully, Jenny reached over, and balanced the spoon on Angel's nose. "Go back to sleep."   
  
  
"Angel. Angel, wake up. Come on, don't be like this, I know you're puke-guy and all, but you gotta wake up so we can help you out."   
  
Angel slowly opened his eyes. Cordelia's voice cut sharply through the haze that was his mind.  
  
Standing over the bed were Cordelia, Faith, Gunn, Wesley, Buffy and Willow.  
  
He blinked, and turned over in the bed, burying his head underneath the pillow. "Damned dreams…"   
  
"Uh-oh," Wesley, Gunn and Cordelia said at the same time.  
  
"Uh-oh?" Willow and Buffy asked in unison.   
  
Cordelia sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled at the pillow. "Angel, come out from there."  
  
"No."  
  
"Please?"  
  
"No."  
  
Wesley sat down next to Cordelia. "Angel, we're not having another… Darla episode, are we?"   
  
"No," Angel replied. "Can I wake up now?"  
  
"You are awake," Buffy replied. "You hung up on me, remember?"  
  
Cordelia snickered. "You hung up on Buffy?"   
  
Buffy glared at Cordelia.  
  
"Not that… that's a good thing," Cordelia went on.   
  
Faith shook her head. "I'm gonna go make him some soup."  
  
"I didn't know you cook," Wesley said.  
  
"You'd be surprised what they teach you in prison," Faith replied as she walked out of the room.  
  
Willow shook her head. "Angel, can you even breath under there?"  
  
"I don't breath, remember?" Angel replied.  
  
"Uh-oh," Cordelia said. "Somebody's having a senior moment. Hello, howdy? You're not a vampire anymore. You're human."   
  
Angel sighed. "Can't I just sleep?"  
  
"Is he gonna be like this every time he gets sick?" Gunn asked worriedly.   
  
"At least he's not delusional this time," Willow muttered. "The last time he got sick, he thought I was Buffy."  
  
"He did?" Buffy asked in shock.   
  
"I did?" Angel asked, finally coming out from underneath his pillow.  
  
Cordelia snatched the pillow away from Angel and sat on it. "Angel, have you bothered to eat or drink anything?"  
  
Angel sighed. "No."   
  
"Bad," Willow scolded. "I'll go down and help Faith with the food." She walked out of the room.   
  
Wesley sighed. "Think of it this way," he said, patting Angel on the shoulder. "At least you've got clothes on this time."   
  
Angel considered this and nodded.   
  
"So, how long has it been since you've had the flu?" Cordelia asked.   
  
"I've never had it before," Angel replied. "When I was growing up, if you got the flu, chances are you just kinda died."   
  
"Ew," Cordelia commented. "That sucks."   
  
"Yeah."   
  
"Maybe you should see a doctor," Wesley suggested.   
  
Angel shook his head. "No. No doctors."   
  
"Do you have a thermometer lying around anywhere?" Cordelia asked, getting up.  
  
"Yeah," Angel replied. "Second drawer of the nightstand."   
  
Cordelia dug it out, and shook it a little. "Here, put this in your mouth," she ordered.  
  
"No," Angel replied. "It's okay. I don't need it."   
  
Cordelia sat back down on the bed, and shoved the thermometer into Angel's mouth. He gave her a glare.  
  
"Okay, Mr. Grouchy-Pants. You leave that in for a while," she instructed.   
  
Buffy sighed and shook her head. Angel didn't look well at all. His hair was messy (for once), he looked incredibly pale, and bags weighed down his blood-shot eyes. The expression on his face was bitter, the thermometer pointed up, his arms crossed over his chest. She shook her head and tried to keep from laughing. It was a new look for him.  
  
He gave her a harsh look, and said something that sounded like "What?" through the thermometer.  
  
Buffy shook her head again. "Nothing." She looked around at Wesley, Cordelia and Gunn. "Can you guys give us a minute?"   
  
"Sure," Cordelia replied. She threw the pillow at Angel, who caught it. "Fine. Angel, if you need anything."  
  
He nodded in return.  
  
Cordelia led Gunn and Wesley out of the room. The door closed and Buffy sat down on the bed.  
  
"Why did you hang up on me?" Buffy asked, her voice sounding slightly amused.  
  
He shrugged.   
  
"I think… I think we need to talk."  
  
"So talk," he tried to say through the thermometer. It didn't really work.  
  
She snickered. "It's going to be really hard to talk seriously to you with that thermometer in your mouth. Why do you listen to Cordelia, again?"  
  
He gave her a bitter glare, and she got the message.  
  
"Okay," Buffy said, putting a hand up. "I get it. Leave Cordy alone." She sighed. "I don't know how you feel about me. But I have a pretty good idea about how I feel about you. I know mistakes have been made, and we've both been hurt, and I also know that both your crew and mine would not be happy if we decided to… y'know get back together, and that we have a lot of stuff to work out if we did get back together, and it would be really hard, like, really, really hard, and it would take a while to get through all our… stuff."  
  
She waited for a response, but none came. He just gazed at her in confusion, and only one thing ran through his mind. 'Fever   
Dream…'  
  
"But I… I still feel… I guess…" she sighed, and looked him in the eyes. "Angel, I love you. I've always been in love with you. I'm always going to be in love with you. And now that you're human, I want to give us another chance."   
  
Angel stared at her and blinked. He sighed, and nodded, confirming his previous thought. "Fever dream," he said through the thermometer. With that, he yanked it out of his mouth and he flopped back down on the bed, re covering his head with his pillow.  
  
"Angel!" Buffy cried. She tried to pry the pillow away, but Angel put his hands over it. She wound up pulling him up with the pillow.   
  
He put the pillow down and sighed. "I'm sick, Buffy," Angel told her. "I haven't had a mortal sickness for around two-hundred years. For all I know, this could very well be a fever dream."  
  
"Well, what's it gonna take to convince you otherwise?" Buffy asked. "Should I pinch you?" She pinched his arm.  
  
"Ow," he said calmly. "Don't do that."  
  
"But you haven't woken up yet," Buffy replied innocently. She pinched his other arm.   
  
"Stop!" he said crabbily. "It's not funny. You're a slayer, it hurts."   
  
"Do you love me?" She asked bluntly.  
  
"You're gonna ask that of a sick man?"   
  
"Let's say I am a fever dream," Buffy offered. "Let's say that no one is gonna know about this but you. Do you love me?"  
  
He looked down for a moment, and then into her eyes. "Forever. I love you forever."  
  
She smiled at him, and took his hand. They were close to kissing, when she reached up and kissed his forehead instead.  
  
"Hey!" he cried in protest. "No fair. Fever dreams aren't supposed to avoid that."  
  
"In fever dreams, you're not supposed to know you're sick," Buffy told him. She reached down onto the floor and picked up the thermometer, shoving it back into his mouth. "But you are sick, and I'm not kissing you until you stop being pukey."   
  
"I'm not happy," he muttered, but Buffy couldn't understand him. The thermometer made sure of that.  
  
End. 


End file.
